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Drucker asserts that objectives are commitments but not fate. Without taking our eyes off the objective we need to maintain our commitment.

 

Course objectives are useful for setting expectations of the learner and for determining the resouces that the provider of the course will mobilize.

 

How can the training organization of the 21st century (or at least 2010ish) empower itself to mobilize resources differently from the training organization of the 1990's?

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Drucker makes an analogy between objectives and the schedule and flight plans of an airline. The airlines have been a useful analogy for the training industry (live training - either classroom or via the web.) An event (flight) is scheduled for a specific time/date with the intention of "transporting" the attendees (passengers) from the their current knowledge level (departure point) to a new knowledge level (destination point.)

 

While the analogy is effective it also highlights the challenges of both industries - what happens if the objectives change during the course (flight?) And what if attendees (passengers) have different changes at different times.

 

From the practical perspective of the airlines - little can be done. We must agree to allow the airlines to manage one decision for all passengers - and for the most part we accept this - because we realize there is no practical alternative.

 

From the training perspective - a lot can be done - hence the advent of "open space learning" or "unconferences" where the agenda is set by the attendees and changes dynamically in mid-session (people can walk out of a session and go to a different one if their current choice is not meeting their needs.) Moocs are another example of this.

 

20th century training has been focused on establishing objectives and then moving the group (or even one-at-a-time via elearning) to a predetermined destination.

 

21st century training (social learning in particular) requires the training to meet the learner's objectives and the learner has the ability to change the objective (destination) whenever and how often they choose.

 

User generated content is the solution - aided by effective management, security, search and retrieval functionality.

 

What thoughts do you have related to UGC and objectives?

This is a great question. When I was an undergraduate at Case (Institute of Technology), I struggled to even pass. It wasn't so much that the work was difficult, but there was just so much to absorb. I did graduate in four years, but when people hear my grade point average they always ask if that was on a three-point scale (it wasn't).

When I got into the work place, I found that I was able to figure things out much more easily than many of my peers. I now believe this was due to the fact that I was smarter, but due to the fact that I knew the process well to find the answer. My professors had taught me and my fellow students how to think, effectively and quickly!

So much of training and education is dedicated to absorbing content, not focused on process.

So, to answer the question directly, how we apply new thinking to modern training (and education): Focus on process, not content. What resources/data should be focused upon, and what should be selectively ignored.

The challenge of today is not the lack of knowledge, but surviving and thriving with more knowledge than we could ever possibly absorb, even with a niche subject matter.

Unconferences are like a buffet of learning where one can get plenty of what they want not what someone else feels they need. 

Trapped on flight to a destination.... the destination is important but how one gets there is not. One might drive and another might invent a "transporter" and beam themselves there :-)

People learn in their own ways.

Interested to see what others have to say on this. 

Fred - terrific analogy - "buffet of learning" - thanks for making such a useful contribution to this conversation.
 
Fred St Laurent said:

Unconferences are like a buffet of learning where one can get plenty of what they want not what someone else feels they need. 

Trapped on flight to a destination.... the destination is important but how one gets there is not. One might drive and another might invent a "transporter" and beam themselves there :-)

People learn in their own ways.

Interested to see what others have to say on this. 

Chris - focusing on the process and not the content is a terrific contribution to this conversation.
 
Chris Lambrecht said:

This is a great question. When I was an undergraduate at Case (Institute of Technology), I struggled to even pass. It wasn't so much that the work was difficult, but there was just so much to absorb. I did graduate in four years, but when people hear my grade point average they always ask if that was on a three-point scale (it wasn't).

When I got into the work place, I found that I was able to figure things out much more easily than many of my peers. I now believe this was due to the fact that I was smarter, but due to the fact that I knew the process well to find the answer. My professors had taught me and my fellow students how to think, effectively and quickly!

So much of training and education is dedicated to absorbing content, not focused on process.

So, to answer the question directly, how we apply new thinking to modern training (and education): Focus on process, not content. What resources/data should be focused upon, and what should be selectively ignored.

The challenge of today is not the lack of knowledge, but surviving and thriving with more knowledge than we could ever possibly absorb, even with a niche subject matter.

I agree with Chris - we need to supplement content and technique with process, critical thinking, and holistic thinking.  The "in demand" programming language has changed seven or eight times since I received my computer science degree.  Yet, I am able to help my son design, code, and debug programs that he writes in languages that I don't know.  That's because I fundamentally understand how programming works, the types of problems that cause errors (regardless of the language being used), the basic structures that make code work, etc.  Looking up syntax is easy.  

The critical thinking research divides thinking into two parts:  ability and sensitivity.  Ability is what you'd expect.  How well you can critically think.  It turns out that your ability changes very little from moment to moment and in fact, changes slowly and not too dramatically over time.  Sensitivity is your awareness in a given situation that you should be using your critical thinking.  Sensitivity can change from moment to moment based on levels of stress, threats, or other factors.  Most critical thinking training focuses on technique (ability).  Most critical thinking problems occur due to a lack of sensitivity (you didn't think to think).  How often do you run into a problem and make a bad decision but after the fact, when the pressure is off, see the situation very clearly and know the answer.

The challenge we face is that "thinking" doesn't fit neatly into discrete, "measurable" Mager-friendly objectives.  I think that those types of objectives were excellent when we were asking people to do discrete tasks.  However, the world has shifted, very few decisions I make can be formulated into a set of simple criteria or a "given an a, b, and c determine z" structure.  Often, the very task is determining that i need an a,b, and c in order to figure out z or in trying to figure out why one person's a,b, and c leads to Z while another person's leads to Y.  

I often get push back from instructional designers when I provide objectives that they believe are too "loose" or "cannot be measured".  We need to look more broadly at what measurement really is.  Sometimes we over constrain an objective just to make it easily measurable and in doing so get people doing or learning things that are over-simplified or unrealistic.

You can't measure thinking or process but you can measure the effectiveness of decisions and actions based on that thinking or process.  That's where we need to move.  The world is not a discrete place.  Our objectives should reflect that.

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